1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information-processing device for combining a plurality of pages each of which includes image data and generating input image data for an image forming device, and a program therefor.
2. Related Art
Inkjet printers and laser printers are well-known as an image forming devices. Similarly, personal computers installed with Windows (trademark) as an operating system are known as information processing devices.
In general, the information processing device has a printing function to convert image data and/or character provided by an application such as graphics drawing and/or word-processing software into data (PDL data) which is understandable by the image forming device, and send the converted data with a print instruction to the image-forming device. In response to the print instruction, the image-forming device forms image on an A-4 size paper, based on the received data.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 2003-143387 discloses an information processing device having a multi-page printing function to combine a plurality of pages including image data generated by an application into one page data and print one page data on one sheet of paper. The multi-page printing function enlarges or compresses each of the plurality of pages including the image data, copies the resultant data to an image buffer, and then produces printing image data consisting of all of the plurality of pages in the image buffer. The multi-page printing function then converts the printing image data into input data for the image-forming device, and sends the resultant input data to the image-forming device.
The image-forming device feeds a sheet sequentially to an image forming point, and prints the input data on the sheet at the image forming point. In other words, the image-forming device prints the input data in sequence from the tip end of the sheet along the paper feeding direction. Thus, the multi-page printing function generates input data for the image-forming device in the order of printing the image.
Generally, image data to be printed on a sheet has an attribute called “orientation”. The orientation specially means an orientation of the image with respect to the direction in which the image data is described. Particularly, the orientation indicates the direction of the longer-side of the page including the image data to be printed. If the longer-side of the page lies in the column direction, image data is in a portrait mode (designated as “portrait” hereinafter). If the longer-side of the page lies in the row direction, image data is in a landscape mode (designated as “landscape” hereinafter). In the present invention, it is assumed that the image information including the image data is described sequentially in the row direction.
When the plurality pages including image data have different orientations, the multi-page printing has to rearrange the orientations of pages in order to combine the plurality of pages into printing image data (multi-page data) in an image buffer. A conventional information processing device matches the orientation of each page being combined rather than the first page to that of the first page by rotating the page, if necessary. Thus, all of the orientations of the plurality of pages including image data are arranged to produce printing image data in the image buffer.
However, when producing the printing image data as described above, the information forming device does not consider which side of the sheet is along the paper feeding direction. After the printing image data is supplied to the image forming device, and it then becomes obvious that the orientation of the printing image data supplied from the information processing device is different from the orientation of the sheet fed to the image forming point, the printing image data is required to be rotated in order to match the orientation of the printing image data to that of the sheet.
In this case, the rotation process of image data is done twice, i.e., for combining the plurality of pages and matching the orientation of the printing image data with that of the sheet. Therefore, a problem arises in that the process to produce the input data for the image-forming device spends so much time.
An object of the present invention is to provide an information processing device to produce input data for an image-forming device in a short time when a multi-page printing function is used.